Mohawks, Manhattan, Millennium Falcon and Memorial Day

Over the last four years I have had some pretty memorable Memorial Day vacations, in 2006 I went to Duck Beach, in 2007 I took a Trip to Costa Rica, in 2008 I enjoyed a lake house in MD, and last year had fun on the Eastern Shore. This year, my roommates and I kicked around several ideas. We thought maybe go to Europe, to the Virgin Islands, Church History sites. Finally we settled on a trip to the Big Apple, and oh yeah, we (well some of us)  wanted to get mohawks. So we got the hyper drive fixed and took the Millennium Falcon up to New York. ( I recommend that you play this video while reading this post)



The crew was made up of Dan, Joe, Scott and myself. If this group sounds familiar, it might be on account of the fact that this is the same group that traveled to Pittsburgh not too long ago. We had planned on leaving at about 2:00 PM. Scott was late getting out of work and we didn't get out of the house until about 4:00 PM. That made getting to the Chop Shop a bit more difficult. Unless you are my sister Jennifer, chances are you've never heard of the Chop Shop.

 Go here, get your haircut

It is this cool modern place to get your haircut in Philadelphia, and it's cheap. It is the simply the best place to get your haircut on the East Coast. But the fact that it is in Philly makes it a real chore to get to. I have tried on a number of occasions to get there and been denied for years. That would not be the case this time. We watched the GPS as the expected time of arrival kept going up. It was agony. 6:22, then 6:45 and so on. At one point it was 7:34. Joe called the CS to tell them we were on our way. The girl on the phone said be there by 7:30 or no haircuts. Not to be denied, the Millennium Falcon got us there by 7:25. At first the receptionist amended her time to 7:15, but after stating our case you let us got our hair cuts. I'm not sure exactly why I felt I needed a Mohawk, it just seemed like the thing to do.

I've seen enough pictures of myself to recognize genuine happiness. It looks like that.

Now before some of my readers (Chrissi) start freaking out, just know that this will be converted to a sensible short summer haircut int he next few days. But in the mean time I really love my haircut. Joe got one as well.

 

So what do you do in Philly once you get your haircut? You eat a cheese steak. But that creates another problem, do you eat Geno's or Pat's. Both claim the title of best Cheese Steak in Philadelphia and they are right across the street from one another. We went with Geno's and enjoyed our meal thoroughly. One Cheese Steak w/ Whiz, and Onions. It was sooooo good.

 Contemplating whether or not to have another

One question remained, which was better? So we did the intelligent thing, yep we walked across the street at ate one at Pat's. I feel like that is one of the reasons terrorists hate us. Decadent Americans who walk across the street and eat another cheese steak. Nevertheless it was the best possible decision we could make. We at Pat's and now can say definitively that Geno's is better. Although, Pat's had more pleasant service. We realized at that moment that the only thing better than one cheese steak is two.

Fueled by meaty goodness our next stop was the Inouye residence in Scarsdale, NY. Scott's mom and dad were nice enough to host us for the weekend. It was fun to see where Scott grew up which can best be described as idyllic. We didn't have to many solidified plans, we wanted to eat, sight see a bit, that was about all. On Saturday morning we took the train into the city.

When we got of the train I looked around, and reacquainted myself with the Big Apple. Within ten minutes I heard people speaking Swedish. I of course started chatting with them. My roommates told me that the Swedes probably just wanted to be left alone to enjoy their vacation.

We got downtown and headed towards the pier for fleet week. There was a ton of activity going on. We got tickets to tour the Intrepid, and looked all around.

We went inside the ship and surprisingly we made a lot more Return of the Jedi References than Top Gun References. I am a sucker for military stuff so I wanted to make sure and read all of the signs. I think it would have been pretty horrible to be on that ship without air conditioning.

At the Captains Chair giving these yahoos some orders.

We toured the Concorde and checked out the Museum inside the ship. We even met Miss USA Rima Fakih and got our picture with her. She was cute and nice, but once she took her sash off she blended in pretty well. You would likely think that she was a cute skinny girl, not anyone particularly famous.

Scott really only had a few things that he wanted to do on the trip. Most of them involved eating. We headed to the Shake Shack and proceeded to wait in a very long line.

We took turns waiting and very slowly (despite what Joe would tell you) crept towards ordering. At some point a Brazilian news crew showed up and started interviewing people. It just so happened that the couple standing behind us were from Brazil.  I was incredibly bored waiting in line so I decided not so subtlety to get on camera. This escalated to the point that I did a flying kick on Joe and Scott was chasing a squirrel. This provided a much needed respite from focusing on the line. We weren't sure what else we wanted to do that day other than watch the Lakers game. I tracked down a place in White Plains that was showing both the game and UFC 114. I was stoked.

Eventually we go to the front of the line and ordered. The food was delicious. Not necessarily wait for an hour and a half good, but still good.

 View of Empire State from Madison Square Park

By this time I was beginning to hit the wall, we sat down in the Madison Square Park and people watched. Among the people in the park were a large man with sleep apnea, a woman talking to herself, some guy who was wearing shorts that were much to short, and a guy doing some yoga/gymnastics show off moves. We decided to walk over to Uniqlo which is like a Japanese version of H&M, it was totally packed and even though I might have bought something I wasn't interested in standing in anymore lines.

I was ready to call it good and head back to Scarsdale. I stopped at Junior's for some cheese cake at Grand Central Station and then we hopped on the train and were on our way back to the suburbs.

Joe was eyeing my cheese cake.

You all know that Quinton "Rampage" Jackson is my favorite MMA fighter and he was taking on Rashad Evans in a Light Heavyweight matchup, this coupled with the Lakers playing a potentially deciding game against the Suns meant that a sports evening was about to be had. We watched the events at the Black Bear Saloon in White Plains, New York. Once our server discovered we would be there for the evening and wouldn't be ordering alcohol he pretty much lost interest in us. We did order a lot of food though. We had our own TV at the table that showed the Lakers game (again the Lakers made it way too interesting) and UFC on the big screens. It was fortunate that we got there early as the place really filled up. I was bummed when Rampage lost to Rashad. Ramoage almost got him in the third round, but couldn't finish the fight.

On Sunday we drove into the city and went to church at the Union Square Singles Ward. It had some pretty unique characters there including one guy who was dressed in a way that I can best describe as Pirate Chic. It was pretty different from the Colonial ward but I appreciated the character. I did not enjoy when someone asked us if we were in town to do summer sales. I was pretty offended. I asked the guy, do I look like a salesman?

After church we ate lunch at A Salt and Battery. It is a really great fish and chips restaurant. I had the pollock and chips with a deep fried mars bar for dessert. Probably the best fish and chips I ever had even better than Long John Silvers.

That night we watched Stand and Deliver. It was a movie that I had heard about but had no interest in watching. It turned out to be very watchable, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. If I remember correctly my grandma went to the high school that the movie is about, only 60 years earlier.

Monday was Memorial Day and Scott told us all about the parade that Scarsdale village held every year. I love parades and was happy to attend, we cheered for all the participants and walked to the town square to watch the program. It was there that something dawned on me, people that try to reason with a dog are ridiculous. I watched one woman talk to her dog about not barking. I thought to myself, lady it's a dog, telling him please isn't going to work. For the rest of the trip we thought of different things to tell a dog in an attempt to reason with him. The response from the dog was always the same "Woof." Translation: I'm a dog.

We finished our time in Scarsdale with two rounds of batting practice at Baseball field next to Scott's house. We had planned on going to the Yankees game, but that didn't materialize. Instead we headed south for some Memorial Day sales at the outlet mall in Philly.

I got a few things from the Gap , and had the brilliant idea that we go to Geno's one more time. So that is what we did. It was really good the second time as well, we stopped at Rita's for dessert and then drove back to Arlington.

It was a great way to spend a memorial day.